Workshop This Thursday for TikTok Young Lions’ New Design Category! AKQA’s Ros Horner says “It’s the Design Craft That Brings Great Ideas To Life” (Part 2)

The TikTok Young Lions competition is open for entry and we’re on the lookout for the best and brightest young Aussie talent to compete at the 2022 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

If you’re under 30, the TikTok Young Lions competition is one of the best places to celebrate your creativity. And this year’s competition includes a brand-new category for Design professionals, sponsored by AKQA.* 

In our previous interview with AKQA’s executive design director for Australia and New Zealand, Ros Horner, we learned about the new Design category, and what inspired AKQA’s involvement with the TikTok Young Lions competition. 

In this second and final part, we delve into Horner’s personal relationship with the creative world of advertising, and what TikTok Young Lions participants can glean from her success in this dynamic field.

B&T: What does brand identity mean to you? How do visuals play a part in creative communications, advertising, and related fields?

RH: Design has changed since the advent of advertising awards and initiatives like Young Lions. The creative industry has had to evolve, it’s increasingly impossible and pointless to separate the idea, the effectiveness and the execution in our work. The way someone interacts with something, uses something, whether that’s visual or audio or touch is so much about the design of it. It’s the design craft that brings great ideas to life in useful and usable ways. 

Design isn’t about visuals or picking an image to go with a great line in our industry anymore, it’s about how people interface with an idea or a product or an experience. I still love branding and brand identity, it’s a huge part of our work at AKQA, without brand every experience we designed would just be the same! It’s the brand identity, the brand principles and ethos, plus the insights from the people using that brand that make us ask ‘what’s the right solution for this brand and its customers?

B&T: What inspires you as a designer?

Design is incredibly powerful, and people who are lucky enough to work in design or in an organisation that values design will know what a superpower it is. That’s what inspires me. Design can convince people, change behaviour, create action and emotion, and solve problems where nothing else can.

I love beautiful, useful design that makes you think “I wish I’d thought of that”, design that makes you stop and think “that’s beautiful to use” or design that you don’t even notice because it’s so effective. We’re lucky at AKQA that we do work that contributes to society and creates a better future, but I’m a designer at my core and I am also inspired by clever design that makes you smile.

B&T: What is your personal approach to receiving a design brief?

Trust. the. process! Really read the brief, take your time to understand it, ask loads of questions, interrogate it, and then sit with it! It’s really uncomfortable, but you have to sit in the discovery, learn, and research phase when all you want to do is race ahead and solve. Then just start, do anything! But start, that blank page is terrifying, get rid of it.

B&T: If you could go back to the start of your career as a young creative what’s one thing you would do differently?

Nothing! Every ‘wrong’ decision, every stupidly naive move and stupid question, every bit of bad design, tough feedback, every time I said yes to something I didn’t know how to do… it always ends up being the right decision. Do things your way.

B&T: Finally, what’s one piece of advice you have for people thinking of entering the TikTok Young Lions competition?

Like my favourite brand, just do it. My approach to most things is do one thing that moves you closer, one easy decision at a time, like signing up, or buying a piece of equipment, watching one how-to video. The more you share, the less you worry about being good enough the more you gain.

So what are you waiting for? Register now for the Design workshop taking place this Thursday 17th February at 10:00 AM Sydney (GMT 11:00) for the inside scoop on crafting a winning entry!

*The TikTok Young Lions competition is open to teams of two young professionals working in creative communications/ advertising/ digital agencies. Freelancers and in-house creative teams from client companies will be accepted to compete in the Design competition.

Teams will be tasked with creating a design that will include a brand identity as well as visuals of how this identity would look in the real world.